Chương 190: Limitless Path Chapter Two Hundred Fourteen

Walking down the hallways through the underworks and arena section, she took a moment to glance around at all the gilt and marble, slightly in awe of how she wasn't really in awe of it anymore. She eventually wound up in the lobby, noting one person she didn't know walking into the other hallway that led back into the building. She approached the front desk, where Tazeen stood his usual solitary vigil.

"Tazeen," Beth said as she approached.

"Miss Beth. What can I do for you today?" he asked.

"I need to add time to our room," she said.

"Certainly. How much?" he inquired calmly.

"How about a hundred more days?" Beth asked, though she didn't wait for the reply, dropping a gold coin on the counter.

"Consider it done," Tazeen said as he made the coin disappear.

"Thanks, Tazeen," Beth said, getting a nod in response before she left, walking back down to the lounge. She found more people there than she was used to, several people giving her curious looks as she entered from the far door. She simply glanced around the room as she made her way over to Baelvyr's table, noting that Sabs, her sisters, and Blood were all absent from the room. She sat at Baelvyr's table, seeing the man was alone, his table empty other than his massive bulk.

"What'll it be today, girlie?" he asked in a deep rumble.

"Training. At least, for the morning and maybe just into the early afternoon. Got too much to do and too little time," she answered.

"I 'member bein' young," he rumbled, making his mug disappear and heaving his bulk up.

"No time like the present. Yer wolf girlie ain't comin'?"

"Don't know," Beth replied.

"She's…somewhere. I'll send her message; maybe she'll show."

"Come on, then," Baelvyr grumbled, moving through the room like a barge through an inlet. She followed him out of the room and down into the underworks, finding that they made their way to their usual training room, not the one they had used a few days before on her return. She stepped up on the stage when instructed, using her own equipment today. The first opponents were a group of three simulations, and Beth tore them apart with little resistance.

She killed the last one after thirty seconds of fighting with a brutal thrust to the neck, the simulation disappearing as Baelvyr made a grunting noise from the side.

"Too much wasted motion," he said.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Part of how yer gonna get to Expert is focusing on yer movements. I'm sure I've told ya this before, but a big part of making the jump to Expert is to make sure yer not wastin' any movements. Yer doin' a bit better, but ya still swing too big and take too much to recover. Ya need to focus down on more precise, smaller, more exactin' movements. And that goes for everythin', too, not just swingin' yer sword, but how ya move yer feet, yer waist, yer shoulders, and so on.

Ya gotta think about everythin', every single movement," he explained.

"I thought I had gotten a lot better," Beth replied with a frown.

"Ya did get better," he said.

"But better still ain't great, so don't let it go to yer head. Let me show ya." He then stepped up into the ring with her, again not needing the steps on the side of the training ring to get on it. A dark red blade appeared in his right hand, not as long as Beth's blade, but still decently long and a bit wider. He flicked the blade at her, indicating for her to start, and Beth moved forward smoothly, swinging at Baelvyr at what was waist-level on the massive ogre.

He easily deflected the strike, sliding her blade to the side before swinging at her with a backhand. Beth slapped the flat of his blade before striking at him with her own backswing, another attack that he easily deflected with a simple motion.

"That's what I'm talkin' about," he said, waving his free hand for her to stop momentarily.

"Ya started that swing early and put so much strength into it; ya gotta focus on smaller movements. Reducing yer area of movement doesn't mean it'll get weaker; ya can still hit with nearly as much or more force with a smaller movement, and it gives ya more control. It also exposes yer weaknesses less, like so." So saying he demonstrated with a very short chop, but it was still a move that Beth felt was immensely threatening, despite the motion being almost entirely from his wrist.

It also wasn't the fact that Baelvyr's stats were so damned high they might as well be infinite in comparison to her. His strike was that precise and quick, without any wasted movements, that it felt like a lethal blow from the sheer skill. Beth resumed her two-handed grip on the hilt of her blade before slamming his attack away, trying to focus on reducing the amount of movement she made while also keeping herself alive.

He just grunted, but the small shake of his head let her know it wasn't a very good deflection. Baelvyr stayed in the ring, and they went back and forth like that for a few hours, only taking a couple breaks for her to drink. She felt she made some very faint improvement in the course of the morning, but it was like she was grasping at a hair-thin thread before her, it slipping through her fingers as she clutched at it.

She knew she would eventually be able to get what Baelvyr was trying to teach, but it was going to take her quite a bit of time. On top of that, she had her mixed-fighting style where she used both her blade and her body to attack and defend, which likely made the whole thing far more complicated. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! She put her blade away in the early afternoon, signaling she was done with the training for now.

Baelvyr just gave a shrug and told her to 'keep trying,' which was not exactly a resounding vote of confidence in her skills. She ignored the extraneous talk, chugging two water bottles before following the ogre out of the room. He had already disappeared by that time, and Beth was heading a different direction anyway, moving back to her room.

She found the place empty, but that wasn't really a surprise, and she flopped down on the couch after making sure the door was shut, her armor and clothes disappearing without a sound before her butt hit the cushion. She sprawled out with her legs on the coffee table, turning the wallscreen on to play something in the background before pulling up the introductory rune book.

She wanted to finish it quickly, but she knew that rushing through such things would be a waste, so she took it slow, going chapter-by-chapter and reviewing what she had just read after every chapter. Even taking her time, she finished the rest of the book within a few hours, skimming through the glossary in the back to make sure she was familiar with all the proper terms. It was clear after finishing the book that knowledge on runes was an infinite ocean.

Just the little she had picked up from the introductory book had covered so much material and so many possibilities that it made her head spin, Beth leaning said head back against the back of the couch and draping her left arm over her eyes, her right arm laid out along the back of the couch. She still had her feet up on the coffee table but crossed them at the ankle as she shifted position slightly, still trying to process the information.

Runes were like a language unto themselves, and there were thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of simple runes. These runes were the language of magic, and conveyed a concept of magic through a worldly representation. Put another way, anything that magic could do or accomplish could be expressed with runes, and that included secondary and tertiary effects and adjustments.

There were runes for amount of force, duration, amplitude, size, area, energy dispersal, time delay, specific temperature ranges, electrical resistance, electrical conductivity, and so, so many more. There were even runes that dealt with concepts like gravimetric forces, weak and strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic forces. And all of that, everything in those lists and more, were just parts of the basics.

The introductory book hadn't covered them all in detail, of course, as it was merely a primer, but it had mentioned that such things existed. The more Beth found out about how runes worked in this new universe she was a part of, the more she realized she didn't know or understand anything. But that was also immensely exciting, as it showed her that the possibilities stretching out before her were endless, incomprehensible… limitless.

Her musing were interrupted by the door opening, Beth uncovering her eyes to see Sabs walk in and stop just inside the doorway, turning a bright red.

"Beth! Clothes!" she managed to squeak out.

"Yeah, they exist," Beth said, returning to the position she had been in before Sabs returned. She heard the older girl taking off her equipment, muttering invectives under her breath as she did so. She was slightly surprised when, a moment later, Sabs hopped into her lap, facing her and leaning forward to kiss her as Beth again uncovered her face. She wrapped an arm around Sabs's back while sliding the fingers of her other hand through Sabs's hair, pulling the shorter woman deeper into the kiss.

The two didn't get very far before they were interrupted by the door opening again, this time it being Blood walking through the doorway. The lupine woman was far less phased by the display before her, only giving them a glance before making sure the door was shut behind her. She moved over to one of the armchairs and slouched down in it, her own armor and clothes disappearing during the movement.

"Where have you been?" Beth asked idly, only curiosity in her voice.

"Spending a lot of time with your sister," Blood replied calmly, taking control of the wallscreen.

"Hey, I was watching that," Beth grumped at the same time Sabs asked, "Kim?"

"No, Soph," Blood and Beth replied in sync, Sabs's mouth forming a surprised 'O' in response.

"I didn't know," Sabs said.

"Yeah, Blood's got the hots for Soph," Beth said.

"What does that mean?" Blood asked.

"That I have the 'hots' for her. Is it like mating?"

"Nobody calls it mating, Blood," Sabs said with a laugh, turning in Beth's lap and leaning back against her.

"But yeah, having the 'hots' for someone is just a way of saying you're attracted to them."

"Oh, yes…" Blood replied.

"I definitely have 'the hots' for Soph. It's super, duper, extremely burning hot."

"Okay, maybe a little too much information," Beth said with a roll of her eyes.

"I'm not embarrassed," Blood said casually.

"Clearly not," Sabs said. Then, under her breath, "Neither of you."

"Hey, nothing for any of us to be embarrassed about," Beth said, wrapping her arms firmly around Sabs's torso before leaning forward slightly to kiss her on cheek. Sabs grumbled a little in response but didn't really protest, wrapping her own arms around Beth's and leaning her head back on Beth's right shoulder. The three watched what Blood had put on for a little, some show about wilderness survival on a hostile planet, before Beth's stomach growling got a laugh from Sabs and her to hop up from the couch.

She started dinner for the three of them, Beth fetching drinks and utensils while Sabs did some cooking and put some things in to heat up. After they ate and cleaned up, they relaxed for a while, not doing anything except watching the wallscreen and relaxing, just occasionally conversing about nothing. When it started getting a bit late, they moved to wash up, with Blood taking the shower first.

She let the other two know when she was done showering, though she herself had slipped into the bath and stayed there while the other two cleaned up. They all spent a little time in the bath before taking care of the rest of their evening routine, Sabs laughing a little at the vigor Blood used in brushing her teeth, now that she could do so in human form. They all settled down for bed after that, with Sabs just wanting to curl up with Beth and pass out that night.

The next day happened to be Saturday, though it started with Beth once again having the realization that she didn't really have to do… anything. She was powerful, skilled, and, quite frankly, rich. She could spend months laying around doing nothing but eating and playing and, in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't really matter. She pondered it only a brief moment before kissing Sabs on the forehead, starting the process of gently waking her. While she could sit around doing nothing, that just wasn't her style.

Especially not with such an interesting and challenging universe to explore. Sabs woke muzzily, mumbling groggily for a minute before she was all there, Beth taking the opportunity to give her plenty of kisses on the face and neck. She was eventually up and awake, Beth simply picking her up and carrying her to the bathroom, noting that Blood was passed out face-down on the couch in the living room, some dumb program playing with the sound turned very low on the wallscreen.

Beth set Sabs on the vanity, the older woman sleepily rubbing her eyes for a minute before sliding off the edge of the counter and starting her own morning routine. Once they were ready, they moved back out through the living room, seeing Blood still sprawled on the couch, though Beth noticed one large, pretty, lupine ear twitch a decent bit this time as they passed through to the kitchenette.

They started with something hot to drink, which took a little while to prep, mainly waiting on the water to heat, Beth cuddling Sabs the whole time. When it was ready, they moved back to the living room, Beth with tea and Sabs with coffee, seeing that Blood still hadn't really stirred. Beth set her tea on the coffee table before grabbing Blood, getting a low growl in protest, though she only lifted the wolf woman up enough to slide under her.

She let Blood's torso down onto her thighs with a thump, stroking her companion's hair and ears with her right hand as she leaned forward and grabbed her tea.

"And where am I supposed to sit?" Sabs asked crossly, but Beth just gestured at Blood's legs.

"Despite how heavy her massive ass is, I know you're strong enough to lift it," Beth replied, laughing when Blood growled, even moreso when the woman made a whine noise as Sabs lifted her legs and slide under them.

"I've wound up with her butt in my face," Sabs grumbled.

"Please don't fire off a big fart, Blood."

"Don't needa," the wolf woman grumbled, growling a bit in contentment as Beth continued stroking her hair.

"Is it alright if I pet you, too?" Sabs asked.

"Yep," Blood growled lazily in response.

"Thanks," Sabs said quietly, grabbing her coffee in her left hand and stroking Blood's back with her right.

"This is nice," chuckled Beth.

"Should I take my wolf form?" Blood mumbled.

"No!"

"No! Please!" Both Sabs and Beth responded in unison.

"Okay…hmmmmmm," Blood replied, growling contentedly. After a minute, Sabs took another sip of her coffee and said, "I think she fell asleep."

"Yeah, hard to tell. She's not a drool-er like someone I know," Beth replied.

"Beth! Stop! That's so embarrassing," Sabs squealed.

"You know I think it's funny," Beth replied with a little giggle.

"Hmph," Sabs responded with a pout, turning her head away from Beth.

"You're cute, even when you're mad," Beth said.

"I'm not cute," Sabs protested.

"Very cute," Beth replied, leaning over to kiss Sabs.

"Less flirting, more petting," Blood grumbled.